The Digitizer

I never expected internal turmoil while cleaning the garage – but it happened.

In the garage, I was throwing away many things without a second thought. Then I came across one item I debated about before throwing away. I thought, “You’ll never do anything with them.” Moments later, I pulled them out of the trash while thinking, “Maybe someday you will.”

I threw them away again while telling myself, “You have five large boxes of them downstairs.” Later, while digging them out of the trash I was thinking, “Just add them to the boxes downstairs.”

The third time I placed them in trash I was convinced they would stay there as I declared, “They really have no value.” As I dug them out the trash, I told myself, “While not tangible, sentimental value counts.”

Realizing I would never get the garage cleaned out if I kept fighting with myself, I took them downstairs and threw them on the counter. That’s where ten 35mm negative filmstrips stayed for six months.

Last week, I picked them up along with the other boxes of photos, negatives, and slides. Char bought me a digitizer - what a perfect gift! At least for someone like me.

This beauty can digitize slides and negatives, color and black and white. You can choose what resolution to save then at, rotate them, and even crop them if you’re so incline.

I started with some negatives that were at least twenty years old and treated pretty poorly. Yet, I was happy with the quality of the digitized photo. The way the negatives or slides were handled in the past is the key to the quality you get.

While it’s fun to digitize them, there are at least three drawbacks. The first is, with as many negatives and slides as I have it could take me fifty years, more if I want to write stories about them. Secondly, this type of project will keep you up past your normal bedtime. Lastly, when you do go to bed it's hard to sleep. You lay there wondering, “Where did the last twenty years go?”